Douglas Fox

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Sir Douglas Fox

Sir (Charles) Douglas Fox (born May 14, 1840 in Smethwick , Staffordshire , England, † November 13, 1921 in Kensington , London ) was a British civil engineer , railway engineer, bridge and tunnel builder.

Life

Douglas Fox was the eldest son of Charles Fox , the railroad and bridge construction contractor best known for building the Crystal Palace . Douglas Fox went to King's College School and then went to King's College London , but had to give up plans to graduate from Trinity College , Cambridge when his father's company , Fox, Henderson & Co. , collapsed, and his father with him 1857 founded the engineering company Sir Charles Fox & Son .

In his father's engineering office he worked on the planning of narrow-gauge railways and bridges in South Africa , Australia , Canada and India . After a serious accident, his father also took his second eldest son Francis into the engineering office in 1861 , which then began operating as Sir Charles Fox & Sons in 1865 .

In London, the office was involved in the planning of lines and bridges for various railway companies that were extending their routes from Battersea to Victoria Station . This also included widening the Grosvenor Bridge (Victoria Railway Bridge) over the Thames .

Douglas Fox & Partners

Douglas Fox took over the management of the engineering office after the death of his father in 1874, the name of which was changed to Douglas Fox & Partners . In discussions about crossing the Mersey near Liverpool that had been going on for years, Fox senior had always come out in favor of a railway tunnel instead of a bridge and presented appropriate plans. In 1866 the Mersey Tunnel Company was finally formed to build the tunnel and Douglas Fox was commissioned with James Brunless to carry out his father's plans. Brother Francis later joined the team. The construction of the 4.8 km long tunnel, which partly ran under the buildings of the city and crossed the river at a depth of 30 m, was in many respects new technical territory and unprecedented in this size. Suitable drills or jackhammers had not yet been invented; the progress of 10 m per week had to be worked out with hammer and chisel. The tunnel was completed in 1885 and inaugurated in 1886 by the Prince of Wales , later King Edward VII . On March 8, 1886 Douglas Fox was beaten to Knight Bachelor ("Sir") in Windsor Castle .

In 1882 the partnership received an order for a railway line for the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway , which culminated in twenty years of activity for this company. Douglas Fox was ennobled for the Mersey Tunnel in 1886, the name of the engineering office was changed accordingly to Sir Douglas & Francis Fox .

Sir Douglas & Francis Fox

The firm's larger projects included the Liverpool Overhead Railway , built from 1888 to 1893, the world's first electrically powered elevated railway, and the Snowdon Mountain Railway , a cog railway that opened in 1896 on the 1,085 m high Snowdon in Wales .

Francis Fox, who had earned a reputation as a tunnel and ventilation expert, was sent by the British government to the commission set up by Switzerland to assess the feasibility of a future Simplon tunnel . In London, the office was involved in the construction of various underground lines, including the Northern Line , as well as the railway line from Rugby to Marylebone Station . In 1902 Sir Douglas & Francis Fox were appointed to consultants for the British Channel Tunnel Co. to prepare a project study for a tunnel under the English Channel and to carry out preliminary work.

In South Africa, Sir Douglas & Francis Fox continued to work for Cape Government Railways and for the extension of the route into what was then Rhodesia , which, according to Cecil Rhodes , should become part of a future connection from Cape Town to Cairo . The project also included the Victoria Falls Bridge over the Zambezi , opened in 1905 and designed in the London office of George Anthony Hobson and Ralph Freeman (engineer, 1880) . Ralph Freeman was hired by the company in 1901 at the age of 21. On the basis of a contract with Cecil Rhodes, the Portuguese administration of Mozambique built a railway line from Beira to Salisbury, today's Harare , for the planning of which the office was also engaged. The Benguela Railway was also planned by Sir Douglas & Francis Fox, as well as routes for the Trans-Zambezia Railway and Nyasaland Railways . On behalf of Alfred Beit and his Beit Trust , four road bridges and a railway bridge were planned, including the Alfred Beit Bridge opened in 1929 over the Limpopo near what is now Beitbridge , then and now the only road link between Rhodesia and the Transvaal , or between what is now Zimbabwe and South Africa . Another was the Birchenough Bridge and the Otto Beit Bridge near Chirundu over the Zambezi, then Africa's longest suspension bridge . In South America, orders were carried out in Argentina , Chile and Brazil .

1912 32-year-old Ralph Freeman was promoted to partner and with the planning of port facilities for the Co. Furness Shipbuilding commissioned. After the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the company was asked to conduct a study of the agricultural and industrial potential of a future state of Israel , carried out by Ralph Freemann, Sir Charles Metcalfe and Chaim Weizmann .

After the death of Sir Douglas Fox in 1921, Ralph Freeman was promoted to Senior Partner and the company continued. In 1938 she changed her name to Freeman Fox & Partners and is now active in numerous countries as Hyder Consulting .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sir Charles Douglas Fox at ghgraham.org
  2. ^ William Arthur Shaw: The Knights of England. Volume 2, Sherratt and Hughes, London 1906, p. 378.
  3. ↑ London Gazette . No. 25567, HMSO, London, March 12, 1886, p. 1205 ( PDF , accessed October 18, 2013, English).
personal data
SURNAME Fox, Douglas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fox, Charles Douglas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British railway pioneer, bridge and tunnel engineer
DATE OF BIRTH May 14, 1840
PLACE OF BIRTH Smethwick
DATE OF DEATH November 13, 1921
Place of death London